Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One — Model Blindness

Crisis in Perception · Jul 20, 2026 · 49m

Beneath the failure to predict the 2008 financial crisis was a deeper question: what if the dominant economic framework made the approaching instability difficult to recognize?

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world.

Using Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One by Meghnad Desai as its lens, this investigation traces how equilibrium thinking came to dominate modern economics. Desai contrasts models of self-correcting markets with a dynamic disequilibrium tradition that treats credit cycles, debt accumulation…